


Taught me everything I know

by atimi (bertee)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-01
Updated: 2009-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bertee/pseuds/atimi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Winchester never thought of himself as a rolemodel. Not like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taught me everything I know

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for a brief mention of a miscarriage. First posted [here](http://bertee.livejournal.com/10010.html).

The door shut with a bang.

Balancing on the edge of sleep, Mary blinked back to wakefulness in time to smile at her husband's whispered " _Fuck_ " from the hallway; when he got home late, he never remembered the door's tendency to slam. Her head rested against the back of the couch while she listened to the rumple of John's discarded jacket and the jangle of keys as he shed work in favor of home. In her arms, Dean started to stir, smooth face crumpling with the effort of being awake.

Hoping to head off a crying fit, she rocked him gently, soothing, "Shh, honey. It's okay; it's just Daddy."

John appeared at the door to the lounge and even after a long day with the four month old Dean, Mary felt her smile widening at the sight of her husband. "See, Dean. Daddy's home now."

Dean's fist clutched at her hair but his movements stilled as he looked up at the newcomer, blue-green eyes staring at John until Mary rocked him again and reminded, "Who's that? It's Daddy, isn't it?"

Delighted, Dean smiled, foregoing Mary's hair in favor of flailing tiny limbs in an effort to get to his father.

"Hey, Deano."

John crossed the small lounge in four strides, coming close enough for her to see the dark circles under his eyes from another night of patchy sleep and another day of overtime. The sparkle in his eyes when he sat next to her and scooped Dean out of her arms was enough to make her forget their current worries for a few moments though, and she smiled as John cradled his son, letting Dean latch on to his little finger and making him gurgle with happiness when the two Winchester men conducted a tug-of-war over John's pinky.

Allowing Dean to win and to gnaw on his finger in victory, he asked, "You been a good boy for Mommy today, Deano?"

Dean's gurgling stopped for a moment and Mary could've sworn he actually processed his father's question before he giggled and kicked again.

She answered for him, "He's been okay. Slept a lot."

John snorted. "Makes a change."

Opening her mouth to reply, Mary paused when Dean made a noise that sounded a lot like John's snort. John's gaze met hers in disbelieving amusement and they both looked down to see Dean's eyes go wide at the sound that had just come out of him.

"Did he just-"

"Snort again," Mary cut in, now verging on tired delirium.

Trying not to smile, John snorted loudly and purposefully at Dean. Dean stared up at him, twitched his nose, and then made the noise again. It wasn't quite a snort and seemed to come from his throat rather than his nose but it was clear what he was trying to copy. John did it again and when Dean repeated it, Mary gave in to her laughter, head falling against John's shoulder as his chest vibrated with his own chuckles.

Drifting away in the moment, Mary was anchored back down when Dean began to cry, hands splayed on John's shirt and face turning slowly pinker as he looked between the two of them, confused and upset by their reaction.

John regained his composure first, a good-natured smile on his lips as he shifted Dean higher on his chest. "Shh, kiddo," he murmured. "It's alright. Your Mom and I are happy, that's all. You're a smart little guy, huh?"

"Yes, he is," Mary added, stroking Dean's back.

"See?" John reassured, cuddling Dean. "If your Mom says it, it's got to be true."

The sniffles died down and Dean settled, smearing tears and drool on John's shirt but babbling contentedly against the warmth of his father's body. Remembering how she rested her head on the same spot sixteen months ago, John's shirt damp with her own tears at the loss of their first attempt at a family, she cupped Dean's head gently, leaning further into her husband and marveling at how far they'd come in a little over a year.

Wordlessly, John enveloped her in a one-armed hug and continued to rock a sleepy Dean as he spoke with quiet pride, "You're gonna grow up to be just like your Dad one day, Deano."

Mary watched Dean's eyes flutter closed, little thumb sneaking its way into his mouth while John's breathing lulled him to sleep. Barely able to keep her own eyes open, she tucked her legs up underneath her, relishing the safety and comfort of her husband's hold as she whispered, "I hope so."

 **  
**+++**   
**

John hated night-time.

In the day, he had the boys to distract him. Dean would be clambering all over the motel room, filled with an insatiable curiosity to see for himself how cornflakes worked, or couches, or pictures, or refrigerators, so that he could report his findings to his baby brother. That morning, John had watched him solemnly informing Sammy that there were birds in his pillow and people needed to keep their heads on them at night or else they'd fly away.

In between listening to his brother's stories, Sammy needed feeding, burping, changing, bathing, and a whole host of other things John never thought he would have to do on his own. But Sammy was still Sammy and even at his burpy, stinky, moody worst, John was always glad that the stick had turned blue for the third time.

The day-time was no problem. When the sun and his boys were up, John could separate himself enough from his troubles, a thick layer of ice separating him from a dead wife, motherless children, a preternatural murderer, and the uncontrollable swirl of emotions that lurked in the deep.

Night-time was a different story. At night, no matter how many cheery infomercials he watched or how long he stared at his sleeping sons, the ice started to crack, letting the cold reality seep through. At night, John wanted to drink. He wanted to hit something or someone. He wanted there to be someone he could trust with his boys. He wanted to grieve.

One night, the urge to hit something won out. He didn't even remember when it started but he somehow got from a cheap beer to having his fist buried in the cheap plaster of the motel room, tears down his cheeks and broken glass around his feet. There was a shuffle and a squeak from somewhere in the bedroom but he didn't pursue it, instead pulling his fist out of the wall and staring absently at his bloodied knuckles.

He swept up the glass when the sun came up; thoughts of Sammy cutting himself on the shattered beer bottle were enough to induce the nausea part of his hangover.

He rehung the motel's ugly-ass picture of a boat over the hole in the plaster and wondered how long it would take Dean to notice it had moved.

After passing out on the couch for a few hours, he awoke to the sound of cartoons and Dean's quiet narration of what was happening with some cartoon mutt John didn't recognize. Calmed by the sunshine, John felt the cracks repair themselves for the day and ruffled Dean's hair with a morning greeting before going to track down some food for Sammy.

Later that day, when he was putting Sammy down for his afternoon nap, he found a dent in the plaster the size of a five year old's fist.

The next day, John Winchester started to learn how to hunt. If Dean was going to copy him, it should be something worth doing.

 **  
**+++**   
**

Pixies were a bitch.

Or several bitches, to be precise. Always female, always sneaky, and always a pain in the ass to hunt. John had tracked them for days, taking out the slower, weaker ones in order to lessen the power of the group before moving in for the kill with the major traps.

He'd been victorious (in the sense that he wasn't dead and the pixies were) yet he felt anything but as he pulled the Impala into the parking lot with a groan. His head hurt from the pixies' spellwork, his legs hurt from the pixies' tripwires, and his whole body ached from its encounters with tree branches during the week he'd spent hiding out in the woods. As he trudged his way up the five flights of stairs to their apartment, he desperately needed a shower, a good week's sleep, and a large portion of food that wasn't cooked in a tin can over a fire.

What he didn't need was to find his thirteen year old son sitting on the floor, looking out at the highway with his feet dangling over the edge of the walkway and with a cigarette tucked between his lips.

His bags fell to the floor in a second, his patience worn out by pixies three days earlier, and he strode over, not bothering to mask the sound of his footsteps as he grabbed his son by the arm, pulled him roughly to his feet and snatched the smoldering cigarette from his lips. "What the fuck is this?"

Sam glared up at him. "A pony," he retorted sarcastically. "What the fuck's it look like?"

John's hand curled into a fist, voice low and barely controlled. "Watch your language, boy."

"Why? You don't," he spat, full to the brim with teenage angst John was sure he didn't have when he left.

Tossing the lit cigarette over the balcony, he moved in closer to his son. "I'm your father, Sam. You'll do as I say-"

"Not as you do?" Sam finished, lip curling up in a sneer.

"This is not a discussion," John snapped back. "As long as you're under my roof, you do not smoke, you got that?"

"You do."

John's headache felt like drums at his temples, pounding in time with his heartbeat. Sam wasn't supposed to know he smoked.

"Yeah? I'm trying to quit," he said confidently, knowing that he'd never even thought about quitting before but wanting to cling on to as much authority as he could. "It's bad for you, Sam, and I don't want you starting. How am I gonna take you out on hunts if you're too busy coughing up your lungs to fire a gun straight?"

Sam's lips curled down in a pout and John knew he'd won. If Sam had actually liked cigarettes, he'd have fought harder; he was only smoking because John himself did it. Seizing the silence, he pushed, "Am I ever gonna find out you've been smoking again?"

Sam scuffed at the worn floor. "No, Sir."

"Good." He straightened up, not realizing he'd been hunched until the torn skin on his side protested at the movement. "Now you're gonna give me ten laps of the apartment block to make sure you haven't messed up your lungs."

It was a poor pretext - Sam had probably smoked half a pack at most - but it would have the desired effect. This time there was more bitterness in Sam's voice as he replied sullenly, "Yes, Sir."

John really needed to sit down. "Get to it," he prompted gruffly, reaching out to the railings for support when Sam took off down the corridor.

Barely upright, he closed his eyes for a second but squeezed them shut tighter when he heard Sam mutter to himself as he jogged down the stairs, "Dick. Dean should get a hundred goddamn laps." John's head dropped and he listened closer, half-suspecting Sam was saying this for his benefit. "He's been smoking for fucking months."

Sam's footfalls became quieter and John put more of his weight on the railing, hurting all over. His fingers itched for a cigarette and he tried to tamp down the hypocritical craving.

He should've known better than to think Sam would copy him. It was always the same: Sam followed Dean's lead, Dean followed John's, and half the time John led them both up shit creek without a paddle.

He knew he needed a shower, some rest, and some food - his body had been demanding it the whole way home - but when he got inside the cramped apartment, he kicked his bags to one side, sank into his chair, and began to wait. What they all needed was for him to talk to Dean.

 **  
**+++**   
**

When Dean was eighteen, he walked in on John having sex with Denise, their landlady. John pretended it had never happened and Dean pretended not to notice that the Winchesters stayed there rent-free for two weeks.

A week after his nineteenth birthday, Dean had sex with Denise when John was on a hunt. He and Sam stayed there rent-free for the four weeks it took John to come home.

 **  
**+++**   
**

"So." Dean took a swig of beer. "What happened with Vanessa?"

John's eyebrows raised and Dean bit back a smirk at his measured question of "Vanessa?"

"Yeah. Vanessa." He let the smirk spread across his lips. "The bar owner you hooked up with back in Huntsville. That Vanessa."

John stared down at the bottle of cheap beer and peeled off half the label. "She's a good woman."

"A good woman? C'mon, dude," Dean chided, legs sprawled carelessly over the arm of the chair, "I'm not a kid anymore. You can tell me more than 'she's a good woman'."

John supped his beer with a shake of his head. "Hey, I don't care if you are out of your teens. You're still my kid and I'm not talking about that with you."

"Oh, come on," Dean whined, sounding all of two instead of twenty. He sat up in his chair, a spark of something in his eyes. "You like her, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," he answered, peeling off another section of label which stuck to his fingers.

"So? You gonna go back and see her or what?" Dean asked with something horribly like hope in his voice. "I mean, we could easily pass through there sometimes. Hell, we could even bring her with us on hunts, y'know, if they're easy and local. She was pretty handy with that mallet."

John peeled off the last strip of label and dropped it to the floor. "I said I'd call her."

Dean grinned in triumph. "You going to?"

Staring at his bottle, John rested his thumb against the tacky residue.

"No."

 **  
**+++**   
**

"Gotta say, Dean, I thought you were going to fight me on this one."

John was aiming for jovial, expecting to be teased about him kicking Dean's ass if he'd refused or about Dean being able to take his old man one day, but the remark fell short, not even seeming to reach his subdued son. Staring out of the window of the Impala as they headed back to pick John's truck up from Bobby's, Dean had hardly said a word the entire journey.

Now didn't look like it was shaping up to be any different as he shrugged. "We can go wherever. Not like there's any reason to stay."

His tone smacked of self-pity, something John hadn't heard from him since Sam went off to Stanford and something which had been driven out of him ( _pushed down_ ) by almost relentless hunts and kills. Feeling more concern than he was willing to show, he asked casually, "Something happen back there, son?"

Dean shrugged again. It was probably as close to honest speech as the Winchesters ever got. "Nothing important. We bagged the skin-walker; can't ask for much more, right?"

There was still something missing and John searched his mind for what it was. In the section of his memories titled 'Athens, Ohio' he had a fairly good layout of the two major cemeteries, the specific IDs he'd used on the library clerks, a cheap store for good ammo, and a good store for cheap food, but almost nothing on what Dean had been doing while they were there. Recalling something about a college, he took a stab in the dark. "You say goodbye to that friend you made?"

"Cassie."

John almost winced at the speed with which Dean corrected him. Whoever this Cassie was, she wasn't just a friend.

Sensing his reaction, Dean coughed into his fist and added with forced nonchalance, "But yeah, I said goodbye."

John was never good at this. "Did you two...?"

"Nothing serious," Dean assured him. Again, too quickly. "She's a good woman."

"You gonna keep in touch?" Dean looked over at him in surprise and he covered quickly (because God forbid he actually care about his son's future), "Journalists are always good contacts to have."

"I've got her number," Dean admitted quietly. "Said I'd call her."

"You going to?"

John felt like a masochist before he'd even got the question out, knowing what Dean's answer would be but staring ahead at the surface of the road, hoping that maybe his son would surprise him.

Dean's eyes stayed fixed forward too.

"No."

 **  
**+++**   
**

The door shut with a bang.

From his seat on the couch, Dean closed his eyes, knowing rationally that his father had just forgotten how the wind would make the door slam but still feeling like it had been done on purpose. The roar of John's truck covered the silence of the room, all high-powered turbo noise rather than the deep, satisfying purr of the Impala. He couldn't decide which was worse: the growl of the truck when John left or the rattle and puff of the bus' exhaust when Sammy did the same.

His first two fingers itched for a cigarette, a ten-year-old, bone-deep itch which he hadn't given into for years and wasn't about to surrender to now.

His knuckles itched for a target.

Resisting the urge to languish in the dark of the motel room, drinking the last of the beer until the cold truth of his situation flooded his system, Dean propelled himself to his feet and gathered up the last of his belongings. Any self-pity he might have had about the fact that one duffel bag was all he had to show for himself after twenty-five years was pushed down, possibly to be revisited in the light of day or possibly to be submerged for good.

The second slam of the room door was foreign; the slam of the Impala's door was as close to home as he could get. Keys in the ignition, he started her up before he checked the map and picked the music. Out of reflex, his eyes darted to the mirror, half-expecting to see John's truck waiting behind him and Dad gesturing for him to get his ass in gear and lead the way to their next hunt.

Rolling his eyes at himself when there was nothing there, he headed out of the parking lot, murmuring sarcastically to himself, "Nice job, Dean. Real smooth."

The road (and the mirror and the front seat) was empty but Dean paused anyway, glancing down at his phone and wondering if John would be any better than Sammy at keeping his parting promise.

 _"I'll call you."_


End file.
